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MCG Health Data Breach Impacts 8 Organizations, 793K Individuals

At least 8 organizations and 793,283 individuals were impacted by a third-party data breach stemming from MCG Health.

Jill McKeon
By
Published: 24 Jun 2022

As previously reported, Seattle-based company MCG Health suffered a data breach in March resulting from unauthorized access. The Seattle-based software company provides patient care guidelines to providers and health plans using artificial intelligence and technology solutions.

According to a recent entry to the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) data breach portal, the incident impacted 793,283 individuals in total. Since MCG disclosed the breach on June 10, at least eight organizations have come forward and said that they were impacted by the breach.

The impacted data included names, addresses, phone numbers, gender, dates of birth, medical codes, and Social Security numbers.

The following organizations have issued separate notices about the MCG breach:

“Upon learning of this issue, MCG took steps to understand its nature and scope. A leading forensic investigation firm was retained to assist in the investigation,” MCG’s notice stated.

“Additionally, MCG is coordinating with law enforcement authorities. MCG has deployed additional monitoring tools and will continue to enhance the security of its systems.”

ATRIUM HEALTH AT HOME FACES PHISHING ATTACK

South Carolina-based Atrium Health at Home informed 6,695 of a phishing attack between April 7 and April 8. An unauthorized party used a phishing scam to gain access to an employee’s business email and messaging account.

“The behavior of the unauthorized party indicates they were likely focused on sending other phishing emails and not targeting medical or health information,” Atrium noted.

“Unfortunately, despite a thorough investigation, we could not conclusively determine whether personal information was actually accessed by the unauthorized party.”

The impacted account included names, birth dates, health insurance and medical information, and addresses, along with a small number of Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and financial account information.

“Atrium Health takes privacy and security very seriously. As soon as we discovered the incident, we immediately took action to prevent any further unauthorized activity, including resetting the user password, confirming no further activity could occur, and notifying law enforcement,” the notice continued.

“We have enhanced our security controls as appropriate and continue to evaluate measures to minimize the risk of any similar incident in the future. We also continue to provide regular, ongoing phishing training to our employees.”

TRIDENTCARE SUFFERS BREAK-IN, ACCESS TO CORRUPTED HARD DRIVES

Maryland-based mobile diagnostic and imaging service TridentCare suffered a break-in at one of its facilities, potentially exposing the data of 6,200 individuals.

According to a notice on its website, unauthorized individuals broke into a TridentCare facility on April 17 and “gained physical access to a set of hard drives and other equipment.”

“Our outside experts believe there is a significant possibility that data on the hard drives would have been corrupted and therefore unreadable. Even if not corrupted, it would have required certain technical capabilities to access the data. Also, at this time there is no indication that the data has been accessed or misused.”

Despite this, TridentCare notified impacted individuals of the incident in the rare case that the unauthorized individuals were able to access the data. The drives contained names, birth date, and some Social Security numbers.

“In response to this event, we engaged a cybersecurity expert to help with the investigation and remediation,” the notice continued.

“We also reported the robbery to local law enforcement and are cooperating with their investigation, as well as increased security safeguards at the facility.”

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